After Slamming Palin, NY Times Excited for Up Coming Obama Death Panels

For The New York Times, Steven Ratner had to admit last month that he was pretty darned excited for those Obamacare death panels to get started. “WE need death panels,” he said on September 16. This from the same paper that in 2009 attacked Gov. Sarah Palin for her rhetoric and an Old Media establishment that gave Palin a “lie of the year” award for her claim that Obamacare death panels were coming.

The Times sudden appreciation of death panels isn’t the only bit of hypocrisy revealed in Ratner’s article. His very first paragraph wallows in rank hypocrisy.

Well, maybe not death panels, exactly, but unless we start allocating health care resources more prudently — rationing, by its proper name — the exploding cost of Medicare will swamp the federal budget.

So, not only is Ratner suddenly looking forward to the very death panels his paper mocked Palin for alerting us all to back in 2009, but he’s now openly admitting that the costs of Obamacare will skyrocket unless we start rationing care and telling some people they aren’t allowed to have health saving procedures!

Doesn’t this paragraph prove out what conservatives have been saying about Obamacare since day one? That there will be rationing, that some government agency will be deciding who will live and who will die, that the costs will be ruinous, and that the Democrat’s claims that “everyone will get care” is an outright lie — this is what we’ve been saying from the beginning.

Yet, we were told by the Times and Democrats that no rationing was in the offing. We were told we could keep our doctors if we like them. We were sold all sorts of rosy scenarios telling us how great Obamacare would be and the Times led the charge to convince America to acquiesce to Obamacare.

Now that the mess is passed and soon to go into effect, here is Ratner admitting that everything conservatives said was right.

Enter the Independent Payment Advisory Board. ObamaCare deliberately insulated it from normal Congressional oversight and approval (its word is law unless Congress acts; IPAB shouldn’t be able act unless Congress approves its budget and priorities). By dictating overall spending levels, IPAB will restrict care without knowing who they’re doing it to, leaving the dirty work of deciding exactly who should and shouldn’t receive care to hospitals and other medical providers. Consider it death panel outsourcing. You can rest assured that providers will get the latest and greatest advice from the likes of “Zeke the Bleak” Emanuel and others with a utilitarian view of humanity on implementing “quality-adjusted life year system” and other schemes to decide who is unworthy of medical attention up to and including continued life.

Blummer also asked if Politifact was now going to vacate its dubious award to Palin for the Lie of The Year 2009 for her death panel comment?

With Ratner essentially admitting that rationing is a must and that rationing means some won’t get life saving care, it is Politifact itself that should be awarded the “lie of the year” award.

The left does not object to death panels because they expect to have left wing government bureaucrats sitting on those panels making decisions. They also expect that if they don’t like the decisions of those panels that having a left wing government in place means that you can always pay off some corrupt left wing politician in order to get your way.

What the left objects to is that they got called on it. They want their little fascist state, they just don’t like having it pointed out that they are fascists.

herddog505

Agreed. It’s the same with many other things:
— Complaints about the Patriot Act died out pretty quickly after 1-20-2009;
— Attacking foreign countries without any direct, unmistakable, Pearl Harbor-like provocation is just fine if the man who orders it has a (d) after his name;
— Gitmo stopped being a war crime in progress about ten minutes after Bush got on the plane to go back to Texas;
— Huge deficits became “investments” instead of “reckless spending” when the sign on the door changed.
Etc.
As I and many other people have pointed out over the years, Barry is setting some horrible precedents, precedents that will have democrats screaming if a future (hopefully, very NEAR future) GOP president follows them. As jim_m writes, it’s as if they imagine a future in which THEY are perpetually in the driver’s seat.
They may discover that an all-powerful federal government isn’t nearly so much fun when they aren’t in control.

jim_m

Hey, when obama was elected we were told that this was the new democrat majority that would last for at least the next 40 years. The left does not expect that they will ever lose which is why they protest so loudly when people try to implement things like voter ID which will limit the left’s ability to steal elections.

JWH

They may discover that an all-powerful federal government isn’t nearly so much fun when they aren’t in control.

Before accreting expanded powers to the executive branch, liberals should ask, “Would I trust George W. Bush with this?” Conservatives should ask, “Would I trust HIllary Clinton with this?”

914

It seems the economy was the first victim to come before Obama’s death panel.

ackwired

So by this logic establishing a spending limit is a death panel. Kind of a stretch?

914

By what logic? Liberal logic?

Taking over the best healthcare system in the world and trying to make it about YOU, no matter what it costs anybody else against there will..? Fine’s for not accepting your world view? F… off!

Death to Obamacare is the only saving grace. I vomit out all of Obama’s rot gut and tyrannical dreams

ackwired

I’m having trouble following your reasoning. But it is obvious that you don’t like Obamacare. I don’t either. But I have to point out that what you call the best healthcare system in the world costs twice as much as healthcare in any other developed country and produces about half of the results. It also left a significant portion of the population uninsured.

jim_m

Quality does not come cheap. We ha ve the best outcomes in the world and that is a fact.

I didn’t get past the first page in your first link before they left any pretense of talking about health care outcomes and started talking about ‘ fairness’ and measurements of how socialized the system is. They cite the discredited WHO rankings (so discredited that WHO stopped doing them) which measure how socialized the system is.

Once i am back to my computer I will link again to info showing that outcomes are better in the us. I do not deny that it is expensive, but the left seems to think that cutting costs is the same thing as paying less. What obama is doing is paying less.

I don’t think that measures of how socialized your system is means anything. I think that whether or not you get better is the only measurement that matters. Left wing fools think that all that matters is whether or not the government pays for it.

ackwired

I look forward to seeing your information. If it is not too much trouble, please include any thing that discredits the WHO rankings.

As for the WHO rankings. One need only look at the criteria. Most of them are looking at measures of economic equality, amount of government subsidy and how far must one travel to reach a hospital. None of these are particularly important to long term outcomes.

When you measure how much health care costs you are not measuring health care, you are measuring cost, which is more about the technology available and the efficiency with which you use it. That is not all about quality. The bottom line measurements are on disease survival rates. Not how many people get a disease, because that is related to how lifestyle, gentic issues etc. But how long does one live after they are diagnosed. Cancer is a good candidate because professional organizations have worked to standardize the measurements of disease survival so they can know if treatments are working.

The US leads in cancer survival because we are better at treating patients. In Canada patients can wait several months before stating cancer treatment. They can wait up to 6 months for cancer surgery. These delays due to rationing by the government system lead to unnecessary deaths.

ackwired

Thant’s OK. I see your point. Certainly both lifestyle and medical care factor into such measurements as life expectancy and infant mortality. Since we are constantly told that early detection is the key in cancer treatment, I can see how delays resulting from inefficiencies in socialist healthcare systems would effect outcomes. I have bounced around the web viewing different writings about the WHO rankings, and while they are certainly disputed, I don’t know that they have been discredited. I didn’t see any support for the notion that the US has the best healthcare system in the world.

jim_m

Most of the statements comparing “systems” look at socialist measurements. There was a poster here a few weeks back that cited a study that looked at 42 measurements of “healthcare quality”. fewer than 8 had any relevance to healthcare and those only tangentially. The study claimed that smoking rates were a sign of poor health care and that child obesity was a sign of a poor healthcare system.

If you want to look at quality of healthcare you don’t look at socialist measure, you look at the success rates for treatment. How long do people live with cancer? How long does it take to get treatment for your illness? How long is the waiting time for treatment or surgery? These are all very poor in socialized systems.

The US ranks at the top when you look at successful treatment. When you look at wait times the US has the shortest. When I needed an MRI for my knee, I called for an appointment and they could take me the same afternoon. In Canada I would have waited for months. When It showed I needed surgery I had it scheduled in two weeks. Elsewhere I might have waited over a year.

ackwired

I suspect that the WHO includes public health with medical care because they are more closely linked all of the other developed countries that use socialized medicine. As you pointed out earlier, they both effect such measurements as life expectancy and infant mortality, and I guess that you would have to say that they both effect outcomes.
Interesting situation.

jim_m

Life Expectancy is not related to healthcare outcomes. It is far more heavily influenced by lifestyle and genetics.

Infant mortality is a bogus stat as it is measured differently by every country. Some countries count babies as still born if they die months later of congenital diseases identified at birth. You cannot use infant mortality as a measure of healthcare quality unless you are looking at a single nation and comparing the change in the rate from year to year.

It is actually 2007 data (I thought it was 2009) but it is not likely to have changed much since then.

Sky__Captain

And if you do the research, you would find a large amount of that cost is because of suit-happy legal system, which 0bamacare does nothing about.
Also (if you do the research) with Obamacare the uninsured will remain so, healthcare premiums will skyrocket (as they are starting to do), and as a feature the federal government will have control over your life.

(sarc)
What a country!
(/sarc)

Vagabond661

Exactly. plus the government is preventing honest competition by needlessly regulating it.

ackwired

As I said, I don’t like Obamacare. However, I flatly refuse to accept that the choice is either Obamacare or the failed system that we had.

914

If the system was such a failure? why has life expectancy continued to rise over the last 50 years? I mean I have not seen or heard anything about people dropping dead from lack of care in my whole life?

jim_m

Not to defend ackwired, but life expectancy has very little to do with healthcare. Life expectancy is more closely related to genetics and lifestyle choices.

What the left neglects is that hospitals today give awaymillions of dollars in free healthcare every year. People get treated. Our cancer outcomes are proof that purple can still get treatment even without insurance.

ackwired

A more telling question would be why has the life expectancy in those countries that spend half as much as we do increased more than it has in the US.

914

Because of the nutritious food , health and over all bountifulness of America.

Next question?

ackwired

Let’s stick with this one for a minute. Are you really saying that other countries outperform the US in life expectancy because of “the nutritous food, health and overall bountifulness of America”?

914

What I’m saying is; With all that Americans have given and sacrificed through wars and every other endeavor has enriched the rest of the world which would otherwise be under a Hitler like rule!

ackwired

Are you now asserting that other nations outperform the US in life expectancy and infant mortality because of the US participation in wars?

Commander_Chico_Cognoscente

yeah right.

914

? Your money or your life? which means more?

ackwired

LOL…I’m always suspicious when I am told that I have to choose between A and B. There are often 1, 2, or 3 better options available. In this case we simply need to look at the rest of the developed countries whose healthcare costs half as much and produces results twice as good. A little study could produce a list of the best of each would could serve as a model to work towards.

914

I’m not from the Government so quell your suspicious mind. A free market would offer way more viability then another government bankrupt boondoggle scam.

If people have freedom, they give freely to one another. It’s what put’s America at the top of the World.

ackwired

You stick with your ideology. Hey, it works way more than 90% of the time. I will continue to ask the ideology to prove itself with performance. I just don’t see the performance in healthcare and agriculture.

914

I don’t have an ideology. Just live day to day and learn with common sense. No religion, no affiliations. Just life.

ackwired

Well, in your previous post you were putting forth the libertarian ideology, offering it as proof that private healthcare works better than government healthcare. As I said, I think the libertarian ideology works far more than 90% of the time, but the facts indicate that it does not work in healthcare.

914

what facts?? Obamacare facts? fact is, no one one knows whats in it? But for the thousands of unconstitutional IRS/S.S hit squads coming our way soon.

Lock up load up!~ Oh, wait , I already am!

ackwired

The fact that we spend twice as much for healthcare as other developed nations and get poorer results.

914

We get poorer under Obamacare.. That’s a fact.

ackwired

We don’t have to return to the failed system we had just because we reject Obamacare. There are many other options available to us.

One thing I was always puzzled at with the current attempt to reform the ysstem – why not simply give folks who are out of work and/or on ADC/Medicaid a prepaid Medical Account? Give ’em a card good for $1000 a year in medical/dental/prescription assistance, with the proviso that if you go over $1000, you’re covered for whatever you need to spend. (No Viagra or designer frames allowed, of course.)

This would get folks who need it coverage as far as they need it to go, and would have been a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than revamping our medical system.

But I guess that was too simple. Any system put forth by the government must be horribly complex and hideously expensive, or it’s not considered effective…

ackwired

LOL…Also seems that it always needs to be loaded with corporate subsidies.

I don’t even care so much about that. The way Obamacare’s looking, a billion or two in subsidies isn’t even a rounding error.

(And you aren’t calling legitimate tax breaks, which were put in place to socially engineer proper outcomes a ‘subsidy’ are you? LOL)

It’ll be an expensive, unsatisfactory mess. And people are going to wonder just where the hell all the money went.

ackwired

I’d recommend you look into corporate financing of the politicians and the link to corporate subsidies. The largest “wealth redistribution” taking place right now may be from the taxpayers to the corporations. Eliminating the corporate subsidies from medicare and medicaid may go a long way toward funding Obamacare. I know it won’t happen. But it is something to think about.

Jwb10001

I’m sorry ackwired currently there are 2 choices, Obamacare, or move. Perhaps if Romney is elected Obamacare can be repealed and we can have another choice, maybe even a better overhaul of the current system, but I’m afraid if Obama is reelected it’s Obamacare or leave the US.

ackwired

There are very seldom only two choices. I would recommend that you always look with suspicion upon those whe try to limit you. Obama himself has said that he wants to change Obamacare. Nothing stays the same.,

Jwb10001

Well I don’t see what those other options are unless your are up to your neck in money, or you don’t mind paying the fine, I mean tax for not carring insurance. After all at this point Obamacare is the law of the land IRS is there to enforce it’s implementation so, please enlighten me as to the other options available.

ackwired

I’m guessing that you are not continuing the conversation about whether we have to return to the failed syhstem if we repeal Obabacare. OK. I’m guessing that you are talking about the mandate, and only the mandate. If that is correct, you can use your employers insurance, buy your own insurance, go to the pool if you qualify, or go without insurance and pay a fee. Or, I guess you could leave the country. But you would want to find a country whose healthcare plan covered non-citizens.

jim_m

You fail to define how the current system has failed. A lot of the failure is due to government intervention. Physicians once had a tradition and a cultural expectation from their oath to provide a certain percentage of the practice to charitable work, giving free services to those who need it. Medicaid law makes that illegal. The government taught docs to charge even the poorest of society for treatment in their office where once they gave it away. All that thanks to the leftists.

ackwired

If costs twice as much as healthcare in other developed countries. It keeps people in their current jobs and prevents them from starting new businesses by denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. Life expectancy is lower than other developed countries and Infant mortality is higher. It fails to pay for serious illness, making it the cause of most of the bankruptcies before the housing crisis. It has other failures also. But that is a reasonable sampling off of the top of my mind.

jim_m

One more time.

Life expectancy is not due to health care. It has much more to do with social and genetic factors.

Infant mortality is a bullshit measure since no two nations measure it the same way and some count as still births infants who die weeks or months later if their condition was present at birth. The US considers it infant mortality if the baby is born alive and dies just a few minutes later.

Our system does indeed pay for serious illness. I worked for a decade in the bone marrow transplant business. Treatments costing well over $100k were always funded. I don’t think we ever rejected anyone for lack of funding and not everyone had insurance paying.

And while the system is too expensive your solution is to fail to solve what actually makes it expensive and instead substitute a failed government bureaucracy to ration health care and to strangle the quality out of the system. With hairbrained ideas like that you should run for office,… on the democrat ticket.

You’re just uninformed enough to do a lot of harm and to sound holier than thou whilst doing it.

ackwired

The insults really weaken your argument, Jim. It looks like you are angry which would indicate that you are afraid of something. Now, I wad surprized that you would want to go through all of this again. Your arguments are good, but we disagree. I think that it is reasonable to consider public health a part of the country’s healthcare system. You don’t. I got it. Thank you for not turning away any patients. That has nothing to do with the FACT that the primary cause of bankruptcies in the US before the housing crisis was medical bills that insurance would not pay. You can insult me some more now.

jim_m

I thought for sure your avatar outed you as a fundamentalist Christian.

914

lol just a friendly Demon

herddog505

Only when evil, wicked, greedy, corrupt insurance companies do it.

Which is one reason that we have ObamaCare: so that nasty, mean, heartless insurance companies couldn’t pull the plug on people who can’t afford to pay. It’s MUCH better to let a government agency do it…

jim_m

IT is much better to stop an insurance company from making a profit on it (while costing less money) when compared to the government doing it for a far higher cost and creating far greater restrictions to access to care.

It doesn’t matter how dismal government health care is. The point is that it is “fair”. Everyone (other than the political class, which is exempted from these rules) gets the same crappy health care. It isn’t about prosperity, it’s about equality thorough poverty.

Commander_Chico_Cognoscente

There have always been death panels. They have been conducted by insurance companies and hospitals for years.

There are always points where the remaining quality of life and likelihood of successful outcome do not justify the cost and other resources (e.g. transplant organs). There was a reality show a couple years ago at a hospital, they showed a “death panel.” They were deciding whether this guy’s condition justified a transplant. They gave him the big “thumbs down.”

Insurance companies have coverage limits. I’ve always wondered what happens when little Johnny’s family has exhausted the policy but Johnny still needs leukemia treatment. Does anyone step in to pay, or does Johnny just have to croak?

I’ve read horror stories about insurance companies denying coverage for a kid’s effective cancer treatment. If it was my kid, I’d get into a private conversation with a decision maker at the insurance company and promise him an “eye for an eye.”

The question for the insurance company is: how much is this treatment going to hurt our bottom line vs. risk of litigation by the family if we fuck them over. They can assess a family as too unsophisticated and passive to sue and bullshit them into letting little Johnny die. So, I’m more concerned about insurance companies.

As we all know, the government does not care much about wasting money, plus you can call your senator or congressperson to make sure your 96 year old grandma gets the $379,452.22 heart surgery that will probably kill her anyways. Otherwise you can go to the media and say “Senator Schmuck is killing my grandma.” See, very easy.

jim_m

Your attitude is ignorant at best.

There are many more ways to influence an insurance company than a bureaucratic panel of people unknown, unelected and unaccountable.

I have seen insurance companies reject payment for expensive treatments and seen patients win their appeals time and again. Insurance companies need to make money as you suggest, but it is not a cold calculation of the statistical success of a treatment modality and the benefits. When you have problems in an employer sponsored plan, the insurance company needs to please not just you, but your employer. Insurance companies are also competing in a marketplace where their service is what differentiates them. You think that insurers believe that they are off the hook from competition because all the other insurers would behave the same way? That’s called collusion and is illegal. It is also called bullshit conspiracy theory and can probably be treated medically.

On the other hand, the government panel has no competition and no accountability. The government panel is only influenced through political corruption. Government panels do not need to worry about people seeking alternative insurance because the people cannot. The panel is immune from the need to actually serve the patient. These panels are also given to arbitrary and uncompromising decisions. Decisions that they will not pay for new and better treatments. Decisions that they will place quotas on the numbers of procedures.

A government panel is far worse than the insurance industry because it is less responsive, less accountable, less accessible. The government panel is far easier to corrupt and influence through political means. THe government panel is far easier to manipulate so one group is favored over another. Does anyone believe that obama would not manipulate the system to restrict healthcare for demographic groups that did not support him? THAT is the real danger in these panels: The corruption that they will almost certainly foster and which is completely absent in the insurance industry because competition constrains it.

herddog505

Hear him! Hear him!

Commander_Chico_Cognoscente

Do you work for an insurance company, directly or indirectly (hospital liaison)? You’ve said you work in healthcare. What are your interests and biases?

You did not answer the question about what happens when the limits of the policy are reached and little Johnny still needs treatment for his tragic yet treatable leukemia.

Also, do you say that there is a lot of competition in health insurance? The health insurance market is an oligopoly with a few insurers and little choice or competition, especially when you factor the interests of employers into the mix.

jim_m

I have worked in laboratory medicine on both the hospital side as well as the corporate side. For the last few years I managed a lab at a major university hospital. Currently, I an in marketing for a Fortune 50 company in the diagnostic device industry. I have never worked in the insurance industry but have worked on the hospital side with insurance verifiers getting payment for treatments provided to patients.

Commander_Chico_Cognoscente

You are heavily vested in the rents collected in the current system.

So what happens to little Johnny when the insurance plan selected by his daddy’s employer on the basis of cost tells him the money’s run out?

jim_m

In the current system you can appeal to the insurer and often win. You can sue the insurer. You can get charitable support from either the hospital or elsewhere, you can raise money through family our loans or other means to get it paid for. I have seen all of these done. Hospitals employ personnel specifically to assist in this area.

In a government system you’re only recourse is to die. When government restricts what is done there is no other way to get it paid. health care is rationed at the delivery level rather than the payment level. Basically you want people to die if you want government healthcare.

You say that I am invested. You’re right. I’m invested in a system that provides the best quality care in the world and I am fighting against luddites like you who want to make it some third world system.(sorry for the language/spelling issues, I’m at a conference on my cell phone and the predictive text software sucks)

Commander_Chico_Cognoscente

So in the current system you can beg or go bankrupt (as many do) to keep little Johnny alive. Wow, sounds like a real plan.

Of course you failed to mention that those who exhaust their insurance coverage do turn to government – Medicaid.

The system is the best in the world for the top one-third of the people. For the middle third it’s a morass of waiting, claims and bureaucracy. For the bottom third, it is a third world system – the emergency room.

jim_m

Beats dieing, which is the obama sponsired alternative

jim_m

So you are more concerned for having reduced red tape than for having quality health care. Nice

Vagabond661

Besides the military, what has the government excelled in? Certainly not education. And Medicare is going broke along with SS and everything else.

jim_m

Quality of care is the same for everyone. A doctor does not give better care based on your net worth. Like a typical leftist you have no understanding of the term ‘ Quality’.

If you look at the prostate cancer data you will find that 5 year survival is at 99% in the US. Unless the poor represent 1% of the country they are getting high quality care too.

That’s a crock. My brother, a janitor at WalMart, had a heart attack. He called 911, ended up on a table in the OR having stents put in to take care of his blocked arteries. The hospital covered most of the cost – he ended up paying (in installments) about $100.

His second heart attack… he wasn’t quite so fortunate. He apparently wasn’t feeling so good – sat down on the bed with a phone book, apparently to call his doctor… and never made the call. They found him five days later.

Jwb10001

Do you think Gary Johnson is in favor of the fedreal govenment taking over health care? That does not sound libertarian to me sounds like liberal/socalist policy. I don’t know what GaryJohnson’s position is because he’s a non entity but I suspect he doesn’t believe in a big central government taking over that much of our country’s economy. Jim Webb was also very reluctant to sign on to this and has since expressed some concern about the tactics and the outcome of the Obamacare monstrosity.

Vagabond661

I don’t trust the government and Michelle Obama with Little Johnny’s school lunch menu much less Little Johnny’s health.

jim_m

I have related the story before of my meeting with pediatric oncologists from Canada who lamented that by June of each year they ran through their quota of bone marrow transplants. Parents had to hope that their kids were still alive 7 months later when then new funding cycle started.

You have no clue how brutal government funded healthcare is.

LiberalNightmare

>>There have always been death panels. They have been conducted by insurance companies and hospitals for years.

That’s quite a change from the “there are no death panels in obama-care!” battle cry of just a few months ago.

jim_m

Two things I notice from the lefties that post here. 1) they think that social justice measurements of ability to pay are a measure of the quality of the health care delivered. 2) people with better insurance get better quality treatment. So a person with a better insurance plan gets a better MRI or a better appendectomy that a person with a poorer one.

For someone who has worked for years on the delivery end of health care both of these ideas are absolute lunacy. As a health care professional, I do not know how or if you are paying. I deliver the best care I possibly can according to the methods my institution has developed to deliver care in the most effective and economical way possible.

And payment is not health care. The treatment you receive is healthcare. Stop with the bogus claims that our healthcare system is bad. It is expensive, yes, but it is the highest quality on the world. If you want to fix the cost of health care you need to focus on the actual costs of delivering care and not what you pay for it. So far all lefty ideas are about how to choke health care by reducing the amount paid for it without addressing cost.

Health care is expensive for lots of reasons. Malpractice insurance is too expensive because we refuse to do anything about tort reform. We have erected barriers to entering into medicine which has made medical school insanely expensive. We have allowed nurses to unionize and price nursing care out of the market. We have allowed a patchwork of state licensing systems to create artificial labor shortages because skilled professionals cannot easily move from state to state any longer.

But no one bothers to address these things. The left just wants to take over 1/6th of the economy so they can control the graft that will flow from it.

And why does no one ask in the worst economy in generations how does it make any sense to deliberately shrink 1/6th of the economy? Health care is a significant economic driver and employer. We need to help it reduce its costs so it can grow again, not cripple it by cutting its reimbursement and increasing its regulation related expenses.

jim_m

Here’s the kind of quality you get when obama and the left control your health care:

the state of New York has requested that annual doctor visit limits be substituted for lifetime and annual dollar limits in health care plans.

Sorry, I can’t treat your diabetes/hypertension/whatever illness you may have, you have exceeded your annual quota of office visits.

You idiots think NOT seeing a doctor is better healthcare than having to pay more to see the doctor! Sorry, but ackwired and Chico, you are freaking imbeciles if you think that this is better than anything we have had before.